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The University of Texas at San Antonio has joined the growing list of Texas public universities closing or consolidating their race and gender studies departments in recent months.
Effective September 1, UT San Antonio’s Department of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies will be consolidated into Bicultural-Bilingual Studies, a department primarily focused on education and language rather than the interdisciplinary study of the lived experience of specific communities.
In emails and meetings with faculty, UT San Antonio officials have presented the merger as a financial decision that will not impact degree programs. But students and faculty in the race and gender studies department are skeptical. They say the merger must be seen in the wider political context of Texas.
“This is absolutely motivated by the political moment. But they don't want to say that necessarily directly,” a professor who teaches Mexican-American Studies said.
“This is part of what has been going on,” another member of the department said. “It is the political climate that is going against ethnic studies and women's studies.”
Both faculty members spoke to Texas Public Radio on the condition of anonymity.
UT Austin is also in the process of consolidating their gender and ethnic studies departments. Texas A&M University is eliminating its women’s and gender studies program.
UT San Antonio student Marcela Salome Hernández said their phone blew up with texts from classmates trying to figure out what was going on after the dean of the College of Education and Human Development emailed students on January 21 to notify them of the consolidation.
At first the 21-year-old Mexican American Studies major said they didn’t have enough information to know what to think. But eventually Hernández said they reached the only conclusion that made sense to them.
“This is looking like they are pushing our REGSS students out of the picture to stay off of (Gov.) Abbott's radar,” Hernández said. “You're an institution (that’s) funded by the state … Mexican American studies, African American Studies, Women's, Gender and Sexuality studies, that is the epitome of DEI and (state politicians) don't want that.”
UT San Antonio’s Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Sexuality Studies Department is known colloquially by its acronym, REGSS. They offer three minors and three undergraduate degrees in African American Studies, Mexican American Studies and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies plus a graduate certificate in Mexican American Studies.
In emails announcing the merger, Mario Torres, the dean of the college of education and human development said “at this time” there would be no changes to degree programs, course offerings or faculty positions.
But students and faculty told TPR they worry that caveat means changes and cuts could come later.
“To consolidate, to merge, to absorb; whatever language is being used, my understanding is that REGSS is going away. REGSS is being dismantled,” Hernández said.
“Part of me, of course, is upset and angry. But more than anything, I am heartbroken. I feel betrayed by the university because it shows that we're not valued enough for them to care about.”
Torres first told REGGS faculty about the merger at a departmental meeting on January 16. According to faculty members who were there, he brought a team with him to make the financial case for consolidation.
“The presentation that he showed was kind of to justify that the college as a whole was losing money,” one professor said. “So, this was a strategy, a survival strategy, essentially. And I do think the use of survival is interesting. Because I wonder if it's a move to later on, say, ‘Well, we tried these things.’”
However, according to the professors, the actual savings from merging departments would be minimal.
“In the meeting, the amount he said that he was saving from this financial merger was $70,000 which, for a university, is not really a lot of money,” a professor said.
“And that $70,000 was going to be coming from, I assume, merging us and getting rid of a chair stipend, and then also moving our administrative associate, who is beloved by us and by our student and larger community.”
The professors also questioned the rationale behind targeting REGGS for low enrollment. One slide presented during the meeting was labeled “REGGS Enrollment Trends” but actually showed the enrollment of the entire College of Education and Human Development, according to the university's institutional research dashboard.
“It's actually the larger college that's experiencing a decline because of lower enrollments, which has a lot to do with the state of education and people not wanting to be teachers,” a faculty member said.
Another smaller chart off to the side showed enrollments ranging from 43 to 31. Faculty members said that is a rough count of students who’ve declared a major in African American Studies, Mexican American Studies or Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies, but it doesn’t accurately represent the number of students enrolled in their courses. They said some students double major or declare late, others take a minor, a graduate certificate, or just one class as an elective. The faculty estimate that nearly 1,000 students across the university enroll in REGGS courses each semester.
In response to a request for comment on the concern that the merger is more about politics than finances, and could eventually result in the loss of degree programs or faculty, UT San Antonio spokesman Joe Izbrand said consolidating departments is routine.
“Universities routinely review the structure of their academic units to ensure they effectively and sustainably support students, faculty, and academic programs. This consolidation follows a review by the college focused on alignment and long-term program strength,” Izbrand said in an email. “Academic programs, courses, and degree pathways will continue to be based on student interest and the university’s ability to deliver them effectively. Such evaluations are standard practice and reflect our efforts to ensure programs remain innovative, rigorous, and responsive to evolving academic and workforce needs.”
In emails, Dean Torres described the merger as a step towards “a more prosperous future” for the college that houses both the race and gender studies department and the Bicultural-Bilingual Studies department.
But faculty members told TPR they’re being asked to sign paperwork to make Bicultural-Bilingual Studies the name of the new, combined, department.
“That's not much of a merger. It's erasing our department's name,” said one professor. “There's a lot of concern that people are not going to find our degrees if we're hiding under an umbrella that people are not going to associate with our programs.
The REGSS Department has only existed as an autonomous department for six years. Faculty said they’re worried the loss of their name will reverse the limited amount of visibility they’ve gained since 2020.
Some even wonder if that is an intentional part of the merger: If students don't know the programs exist, then fewer will sign up for them, and that in turn will provide a rationale for cutting courses.
When asked, REGSS faculty acknowledged that some people at UT San Antonio may see consolidating race and gender studies into another department as a way to protect it. But they said they disagreed with the concept.
“I think there will be people in the university that would say that. I’m not saying it,” one professor said.
Instead of protecting it, however, the professor said the move is more likely to erase the department entirely out of existence.
Another faculty member said they’ve been trying to get university leaders to make a statement about academic freedom since 2021, when then-state senator Brandon Creighton first started filing bills to increase political oversight over higher education in Texas.
“In one of those meetings, the president explained to us that it was a strategy to stay under the radar,” the faculty member said. “We were told by the president that, 'No, actually, the best strategy was just to do nothing, say nothing, (not) bring any attention.”
But, the faculty member said, that strategy works better for administrators than professors and students.
“Because then we're just staying silent about our careers, about entire intellectual traditions since the histories of enslavement,” the professor said. “I think that's a strategy that works for them. And then they tell us that, hoping that we will also not ask questions or be disruptive.”
Junior Marcela Hernández said they decided to study Mexican American Studies because they want to advocate for educational equity. They see a throughline between their desire to improve educational opportunities for students of color and the current political pressure to restrict teaching about race and sexuality.
In September, Texas A&M fired a professor and pushed out top administrators before ordering an audit of all university courses after a video of a discussion on gender identity in a children’s literature course went viral.
In December, Texas Tech issued a memo restricting what faculty can teach about race and gender.
More recently, the UT System Board of Regents approved a new rule on “teaching controversial topics.”
For Hernández, studying about race, ethnicity and sexuality has been a way to find direction and hope in a state where they feel under attack.
“To me, our REGSS Department is a symbol of hope and resilience that oppressed people have lived through,” Hernández said. “It is the hope that I have for my community as a queer person, a trans person, a person of color, a student.”
“My communities and all those aspects are under attack,” they said. “They're being censored. They're under constant scrutiny. And so, if we lose REGSS, we lose that connection to a hope that things will be better.”
